Article in l’Express by Admiral Jean de Hautville, published 1772
I am writing in response to a crisis. Budgets are scant, our situation is changing, and many have written on the state of the Royal Navy with a jealous eye to our treasury. What they do not realize is how important the navy has been to the rise of our great Kingdom; how necessary it is to the continuation of that greatness. The return of a navy built around coastal defense is the return of a poverty of glory. It is the final acceptance of the end of our Empire. It is satisfaction with mediocrity.
France was in such a position in the 17th century, it accepted itself as a single power among many, strong on the continent but reliant upon allies in the colonial areas of the world. Henri II went so far as to downsize both the navy and the army, leading to disastrous consequences, the loss of Bresil, the Lorraine, Louisville, and our African trade posts. As the 17th century turned to the 18th, the navy had accepted an almost entirely ancillary role, defending the coasts of France from piracy and remaining in dock during major wars. And the reason for this is quite clear--there simply weren’t enough French ships to offer an equal battle against any but the most minor foes. Among the great European naval powers, France was barely in the top five, and had a fleet nearly half the size of the top three.
France was only able to conduct the naval campaigns required of her during the Franco-Dutch war due to a heavy leaning on the Swedish fleet, and the utilization of one of the only naval capacities France excelled at; the massive force of privateers from Brittany. Brittany, traditionally a fishing region, had become a highway for all kinds of crime as their traditional economy (based on small landholding and a largely absent aristocracy, incapable of extracting rents) became replaced by a new system (as Henri II appointed new nobles who gained their wealth through rents). Furthermore, the area, with its numerous bays and broken terrain, became a perfect nesting ground for piracy. While they were viewed as a foe to the crown during Henri II’s reign, under Louis XIII the pirates were utilized to attack English and Dutch trade.
Thus the French navy was comprised of two parts, a small fleet used to defend French shores, and a larger but illicit arm of privateers, who mainly acted against French shipping. This privater arm was the only thing that allowed France to continue her trade with the colonies during the Franco-Dutch War, and even then trade and tariff income petered off to the smallest point they had been since the 16th century. The debt crisis of the later 1680s came largely from this destroyed revenue, and it took France a decade to recoup her losses in the East Indies.
Henri III’s first goal was to rapidly expand the navy in order to regain the hold she once had over colonial trade. Using the new funds the crown had gained from Colbert’s reforms, Henri presented the Council with an astonishing plan, for the expansion of the navy from 100 ships to 300 by 1710. This required a simple increase of ten ships per year, but had numerous second-order effects. For one, the major port cities of Bordeaux, Bruges, Caux, and Marseilles were now mostly commercial ports, and even then were quickly moving to full capacity (for the month after the Franco-Dutch war, it could take as much as eight hours to dock in Marseilles, the queues were so long). An admiralty would need to be formed, and men trained for higher levels of command.
Henri’s plan also called for the creation of a ‘Royal Fleet’, comprised of 30 heavy ships, which would protect French shipping during a presumed war against the Holy Coalition of the Saxon-Anglo Union, and a galley fleet of 20 squadrons which would defend against pirates on the Mediterranean coast. Together with five colonial fleets of twenty ships, and five ‘home’ fleets of 30, the French Navy would be transformed from a merely defensive force to one able to influence trade from the shores of Hudson’s Bay to the shallows of the Yangtze. It would change the French merchant class from a subservient one to the vanguard of French conquest, winning markets in Antwerp, Lima, Malacca, and Constantinople. The French navy allowed French merchants to act far more aggressively, and French merchants steadily cornered the slave, cinnamon, silver, sugar, and porcelain trades, making these all common goods in France and the colonies. They also allowed France to take the offensive after the collapse of the southern Mughal empire.
Plan for the ‘navy of the kingdom’s waters’, including the new military ports which would become the centers of those fleets which was successfully implemented in 1705, with the last 10 heavy ships sent to defend the slave trade.
But how would the navy be expanded to such a degree? Personnel grew by ten thousand as Henri created the Royal navy, and this was just the personnel of the ships, a corps of shipbuilders was also created within the military’s Engineer Corps. A new rank was created (grand admiral, who was in charge of the maneuvers of multiple fleets), and the officer corps of the navy was expanded by three times. What men joined this institution?
Early on, Henri expanded the navy by a process he called ‘assimilation’. That is, the assimilation of Breton privateers into the professional navy via buying the ships and promising higher wages for the crews. While this was an expensive process, it immediately gave France an experienced class of crewmen and officers who would no longer turn on the Crown for the promise of a higher pay. While there were some defections (the Courrant Defection in 1709, by a frigate flotilla defending the spice trade), this plan largely succeeded without any major problems. Moreover, Henri’s assimilation of pirates into the French navy (going so far as to build the Admiralty and Naval School in St.Malo, the ‘city of pirates’) led to an all together different kind of navy than that seen in Britain or even the Dutch fleets.
Whipping was a common act in the British navy, due to its nature as an instituttion manned via forced conscription and the taking of felons from the streets
The navy in England, in Sweden, in the Netherlands, in Italy, is staffed by two methods; the taking of criminals to the galley, and the forced conscription of the coastal peasantry. This led to fleets run as despotisms, with public whippings and execution for treason being common sights in Britain. In France, the integration of the Breton pirates into the fleet led to a more democratic system. From the start, commoners were able to become first officers, and outside of battle decisions were discussed with the crew. This has become a major aspect of the culture of our navy, and the level of discipline and morale that came from this system allowed France to win what she had previously conquered. From 1693 to 1711, the budget nearly doubled, and the majority of this increase came from a tripling of her trade income.
French budgets, 1693 and 1711
So my question then, is why do these ‘reformers’ who want a constitutional kingdom, who want democracy, who want to ‘make France modern’, why is it that they want to return us to the 17th century regarding our navy? Why do they seek to strip the most ‘constitutional monarchist’ organization in France? Why do they seek to attack the instrument which has brought the bourgeoisie into power in our country? The three colonies with the largest fleet presence were, not coincidentally, the three colonies which have not revolted. And they seek to destroy that? This is an egregious mistake, one which no true man of our nation can support.
